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Hey, Walworth County, How About Buying Over-Priced, Half-Unsuitable Parkland with Taxpayer Money!

Most people would say that among the important uses for public money are public safety (and the administration of justice) & emergency services for the truly needy. One might think of it this way: safety, justice, and poverty assistance.

There are few people who would ask a small rural county – with a large state forest system in its midst — to spend almost two million dollars for over-priced, supposed parkland, half of which is, itself, unsuitable as parkland, anyway.

Few people, yet at least two (one of whom, Clark, is the seller):

LYONS — Duane Clark and Kevin Brunner stood on a grassy bank of the White River on a recent spring afternoon with birds chirping in the woods around them and water gurgling over rocks a few feet away.

They were showing a Gazette reporter and photographer around Clark’s property off Sheridan Springs Road in the town of Lyons. The land is less than five miles northeast of Lake Geneva, but Brunner said it feels like someplace else.

“Do you think you’re in northern Wisconsin here?” he asked.

Oh, brother.

1. It would be a $1.9 million-dollar purchase with public money.

2. There’s reasonable suspicion it’s over-priced.

3. Walworth County Central Services Director Brunner wants this land for recreation (‘kayak, picnic,’ etc.).

4. There’s an existing 22,000-acre state forest in Walworth County, and adjacent counties. It offers fine opportunities for hiking, riding, skiing, and nature study.

Behold, THE KETTLE MORAINE STATE FOREST, SOUTHERN UNIT:

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5. Not only would Walworth County deplete what it has in its park fund for this one purchase, it would have to grab almost a million dollars from the state, and borrow almost — wait for it — $600,000 more. Taxpayers in Walworth County will be hit with tax money spent and debt incurred, and taxpayers across the whole state will be asked to subsidize this scheme.

6. Simply because there’s money in a park fund does not justify wasting it. Someone should properly reallocate the money to greater needs, or at the least not add more unsuited land to public property.

When government spends money budgeted for minor wants instead of allocating it to dire needs, needy people experience continuing deprivation and comfortable people only engorge themselves (from others’ earnings).

Allocations of that kind are misallocations.

Others’ earnings, taken or to be taken as taxes, shouldn’t simply be used because they’re burning a hole in a bureaucrat’s pocket, and not for the first time.

7. One reads that Walworth County’s Central Services Director assures that purchasing the land with taxpayer money and public debt will have “zero tax impact.” That’s impossible, of course, and as state taxpayer dollars, local taxpayer dollars, and public debt all have a tax impact.

Here one finds an example of the late economist Henry Hazlitt‘s contention that

….there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of a policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.

(Emphasis added.)

A simple truth, from a simple and plain book, yet a lesson still ignored.

8. One learns of this proposal from an informative and well-written news story, by the way.

9. Thanks much to the sharp reader who told me of this story — I’m appreciative, as always.

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